Many successful home-based businesses are Managed Virtual Service providers. What distinguishes the two is really their internal process. A true MVS is paperless. They live in the cloud with hosted corporate-grade email, hosted servers, commercial VoIP phone systems, online document sharing between their staff and clients as well as redundancies that ensure the work can be performed from anywhere in the world. An MVS can hire staff anywhere, are exceptionally scaleable, require very little overhead and are often a fraction of the cost of other providers. This new low drag, high yield model is revolutionizing the way business gets done.

Another important fact to consider is that by hiring a Managed Virtual Services provider like Techknowledgy, Execusist or Webssentials you are helping provide jobs in the most economically distress communities in America. They have the flexibility to hire where many cannot. There are thousands of talented, well educated professionals in these hardest-hit towns but there simply are no jobs. Combine this genuinely appreciative pool of talent with any job related to inbound sales, customer care or back-office administration and you have a winning formula. Add process, technology and the resources to accomplish client expectations on-time and under budget – it just doesn’t get any better.

If your small business is struggling to grow because you need admin support that you can’t afford to hire or if you’re a corporate executive tasked with cutting overhead expenses and increasing revenue to improve the bottom line for shareholders… we can help. If you are already outsourcing these tasks stateside or offshore… we can help. If you want to hire a company that can scale to your needs… we can help.

Almost every business, globally, that serves the US & UK markets knows that an American Customer Care department would radically change their consumer’s experience, improve retention, earn testimonials, and increase sales. Why then are they still outsourcing this critical role to Asia? Cost!

By an overwhelming majority, customers are demanding better care. They feel their significance as a consumer is exceptionally undervalued every time they are forced to call Asia for technical support, to pay a bill, to ask a question or even to inquire about new products & services. As a consumer, we expect to be treated fairly and respectfully by professionals who understand us and who have extensive knowledge about the focus of our call. We get justifiably frustrated when calling a company only to be greeted by a confusing phone tree, insane hold times and an “agent” who transfers us to another department only for us to relive this scenario over and over again until finally reaching someone who needs to “ask a supervisor” or “research” our inquiry for more information. We’ve got Google for that, we need someone who KNOWS how to help.

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts and extensive training Asian call centers subject their staff to, the cultural differences, language barriers and lack of sincere empathy displayed throughout the entire consumer experience is overshadowed by the fact that Asian labor is cheaper. Companies don’t like to admit that cutting costs is an absolute necessity to maintain reasonable profit margins but the laws of supply and demand, diminishing returns and a severely recessed economy cause them to make unpopular decisions despite public outcry.

An example of good intentions gone bad is T-Mobile’s recent announcement to cut 1900 US Call Center jobs. Thankfully, they are just consolidating and are maintaining their customer care in the US but what will a smaller workforce do to hold times and overall customer relations? For years, to their credit, T-Mobile has used traditional American Call Centers in PA, FL, TX, CO, OR and other locations to serve their consumers but the operating costs are just too high. Consider that in addition to the higher priced American labor, their “loaded cost” also includes a percentage of the infrastructure (building lease, utilities costs, Internet bandwidth, Telecommunications equipment, maintenance, landscaping, etc…) This is just a lose / lose scenario. It is virtually impossible to maintain a reasonable level of profitability or even to just stay afloat in this recession, with the cumulative costs of infrastructure.

Ahh, but that’s it, the elephant in the room. What if there was no infrastructure? What if, in this example, all 1900+ “agents” worked from home, virtually? Think about it for just a moment. We have high-speed, broadband Internet in over 90% of American households (according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration). This means they have at least one computer. Most of today’s communication, record keeping and databases are stored in the cloud (online). Why then do we need a building?

Exec-u-sist is the Managed Virtual Services experts. As a US-Based Call Center and virtual administration firm, 100% of their employees from the executive management, marketing department, technical support, HR and admins all work from home and are connected via a very reliable system of Internet based technologies. A customer in Ashburn VA calling about a product headquartered in Detroit MI, can be served by an agent working from home, anywhere in the country. The user experience from the phone tree, on hold music, call routing, record keeping, etc.. is seamless and transparent. This is no different than calling a company who employs a traditional call center. One minute you are calling TX and the next you are in WA. The advantage; no elephant. No infrastructure equals a significantly reduced loaded labor rate which is almost always competitive with offshore pricing.

As an added benefit, companies that outsource their needs to Exec-u-sist can choose what cities, towns and communities they want to help because Exec-u-sist has the most flexible and scalable hiring practice in the industry. So tell T-Mobile, DirectTV, Expedia, Travelocity, Intuit, Your hometown electric company and even the local plumber that they can have their cake and eat it to. They can provide top-notch, American customer care for a fraction of any alternative they’ve considered before.

Webmail is of course a perfect definition of a cloud hosted service. Your email and other related information is all stored on a server (or servers) somewhere out on the Internet. As long as you have a suitable web browser and Internet connection, those emails and communications are available just about anywhere. It doesn’t matter what computer you use, because all the information is stored in the cloud.

The connotation of the term “webmail” may make some cringe though, and rightly so. In the early days, webmail often was a hideous place that few enjoyed using. This was particularly true of corporate types that often had a full featured solution available to them in the office. However, in spite of all its shortcomings, webmail had one huge advantage; you could get to it anywhere.

As the use of mobile Internet connected devices has exploded, the ability to access email from anywhere has become more and more common, and for many a necessity as well. Access to the full feature set of the corporate email system is also more frequently required, so basic webmail is no longer sufficient.

For the road warrior with a smartphone, a connected tablet, and a laptop, full access to the corporate email system is now considered relatively commonplace. But think about this: when that same road warrior is not in the office, where is that corporate email system actually located (relative to where he or she is)? You guessed it, elsewhere on the Internet! For anyone on the road, what difference does it make where the server hosting your email is actually located?

With a hosted corporate email system such as Microsoft Exchange, your office effectively becomes just another location on the Internet. What advantages are there to this fact? It no longer matters where your office computer is located, provided you have an Internet connection. If your company has multiple offices, no longer is it necessary to maintain special connectivity between all sites for email. As long as you have an Internet connection, you are good to go!

That’s all well and good, but what if your company hosts (or plans to host) Microsoft Exchange on its own servers? Well hosting Microsoft Exchange on company servers requires a network infrastructure and sufficient Internet bandwidth to handle the load of all employees accessing the server at one time, it requires expensive licensing, SPAM filters, backup solutions and much more technical support labor to manage. Hosted services include all of these things at a fraction of the cost and significantly minimize the risk of an outage.

For the self-employed, the small business of just a handful of employees, or even a company with a large number of telecommuters, hosted email is a huge advantage. Corporate grade email, without the cost of servers and support staff is a wonderful thing.

So what are the inevitable compromises that are made with a cloud hosted corporate email service like hosted Microsoft Exchange? Since services like this are subscription based, there will be a recurring cost, usually based on the number of users however, as long as the cost to host is not greater than the cost of infrastructure, software licensing, and support labor, this is a no brainer. The only other major concern is bandwidth in the office. Since email would now be hosted outside the office, on the Internet, you would need to ensure there is enough bandwidth in the office to support everyone working inside the office checking email and using Exechange along with the other Internet related applications and tasks they may have.

If the recurring costs are not a problem, and ample bandwidth is available to handle your expected email load, a hosted Microsoft Exchange solution is definitely something worth looking into. If you would like further information about how to accomplish this for your office or if you would like to hire an experienced company like ours to do it for you, please visit our website

Although we were a small business, we operated like a mini Fortune 500. We had servers and firewalls and redundancy everywhere. All applications from Exchange email, Quickbooks, our Trouble Ticket Management system, Shared Files & more were hosted on our internal network. Acquiring new IT assets became an almost quarterly routine that equaled about 65% of our overall expenses. Back then, there really wasn’t any other way to efficiently provide our level of services, until we found the cloud.

What made us better than our competitors was our flexibility to overcome any problem, our detail-oriented processes, and our genuine commitment to providing amazing customer service. We weren’t a geek shop by any means; we became an extension of our client’s business. In essence we were their outsourced CTO. We supported their IT assets, we helped manage their other IT vendors and we played an integral role in making their IT decisions. We were focused on providing IT Best Practices for our clients that evolved from 25 years of traditional modeling. Our biggest obstacle however, was meeting the unrealistic lifecycle expectations our clients had for their aging equipment, until we introduced them to the cloud.

The cloud is a wondrous place filled with magic and mystery; where data grows freely in seemingly uninhibited caverns of space; where secured access to information is just a few clicks away from any computer; and where the big, noisy, network equipment that used to hide in closets now joins millions of others in secret warehouses all over the world. The cloud is green; both in the cost savings over traditional in-house solutions and in the numerous eco-friendly benefits it nurtures. Most importantly, the cloud is safe. The scariest, yet most liberating part of living in the cloud however, is you own nothing.

We aren’t advocating that the cloud is for everyone or that it doesn’t have its own series of challenges. In fact, the cloud itself is still only a few years old and the technology for accessing it hasn’t quite caught up with the benefits of being there. One of the most important factors in choosing cloud vs in-house is your Internet bandwidth (speed). Most traditional brick and mortar businesses are stuck with slow T1 based Internet whereas completely virtual companies, like ours, (all employees work from home 100% of the time) have access to much faster broadband Internet. Our suggestion, in many cases, is to consider a hybrid of hosted solutions with a scaled down in-house infrastructure for managing data.

With today’s technology and an experienced IT partner like Techknowledgy, LLC a new world of cost saving choices are available to you. They can help support your existing infrastructure, provide advice and expertise to transition you to a hybrid solution or radically change the dynamic of your business to minimize overhead expenses. For us, the choice was easy; Go Virtual, live in the cloud, expand our capability to service a national client-base and take advantage of the extreme benefits to hiring employees anywhere in the country. How can we help you?

So what can the cloud “do”? That’s a very good question, whose answer will likely continue to change and develop as the cloud becomes more available and powerful. Currently, common uses for the cloud include email hosting, file sharing, backups, hosted applications, remote computing, etc. There are many other uses, but this should provide a good example.

With so many products prominently marketing cloud functionality, it certainly seems to be the way that many are moving; the way of the future. Seeing this trend, should you explore new ways to use the cloud? The answer to that question depends on a lot of things. Like most technical advances throughout history (especially newly developed ones), there is inherently a compromise in its design. Whether a cloud based service is a good fit is simply a question of whether the compromise is an acceptable one.
The nice thing about an emerging technology is that there are often many options available, all choosing different compromises. Finding an acceptable solution is usually much easier with more options available. Additionally, with new solutions constantly in the pipeline, a workable solution may be right around the corner even if it isn’t available today.

About 18 months ago a client came to us requesting a way to store and share information online with his business partner, both in two separate cities. After hours of research and days of testing we came up with a solution that wasn’t as easy as sharing files interoffice but it suited his needs. It was clumsy and had its share of problems but it was the best solution at that time. 8 months later, another client requested a similar need and we discovered DropBox which to this day is an amazingly simply, well-crafted cloud-based solution that works almost as well as interoffice file sharing. In fact, we now use it exclusively as our means of file sharing across staff nationwide. This is just one example of how the cloud is evolving but there are many more just like it. What makes the cloud so interesting is that virtually anything you want to do can be done. In essence, to quote Apple, “There’s an app for that”. You just need to be patient and be willing to evolve with it.

If you would like more information about the cloud or about how to make the cloud work for you, please visit our website

Telecommuting Is Like Getting A Raise
Workers who telecommute part-time and especially those who work virtually from home full-time immediately notice the amount of money they are saving on gas, tolls, parking and vehicle maintenance. With an average drive time distance of 15 miles or (26.4 minutes) each way and based on the IRS’s allowed $0.585 per mile allowable deduction for employee commute reimbursement, full-time telecommuting equates to about a $2.12 per hour net raise ($4400 per year). This doesn’t even take into consideration all of the other daily commuter expenses like coffee, drive-thru breakfasts and drive-time entertainment. Some believe this savings and subsequent cost of living increase could equal over $4 per hour.

Telecommuting Is Like Getting More Vacation Time
Vacation and Personal Leave are intended to help our employees detox and recover from stress so they can be more productive at work. Unfortunately, people are using their paid “relax time” to juggle family appointments, run errands, honor personal commitments, get chores done and a plethora of busy tasks which only exasperate an employee’s stress level. Telecommuters, however, have found creative ways to structure their lives so that both job performance and personal responsibilities are better managed while also providing a routine for social activities and relaxing down-time. This produces balance and order that translates to a much happier, efficient and loyal team member.

When you boil down employee benefits to their simplest components you will see that it’s really just time & money that makes the world go round. By creating a telecommuting workplace for your staff you make it easier for them to fund the other benefits that you can’t. Or you could outsource your administrative & customer care burdens to a firm like Exec-u-sist and save even more money, be responsible for providing fewer benefits and have leverage to hold people accountable for deliverables and service metrics.

1. Improved Productivity:
   Employees who telecommute, regardless of their position, responsibility, role and tenure, have reported that they are much more productive when working outside of the office. The primary reason is the lack of continuous interruptions that prevent focus. These occur when coworkers want to “chit chat” about office gossip or when supervisors stop by to gauge the status of a project. Each interruption requires a shift in thought which disrupts the flow of concentration. Although it is important to the human psyche to maintain a healthy amount of social interaction, this practice should be encouraged off-hours. Employees who work virtually full-time, are more productive, more organized and are less stressed which is very good for business.

2. Increased Availability:
   As disconcerting as this may be, employees that have to go into the office each day actually spend about 30-45 minutes at the start and end of their day recovering from or preparing for the commute. Their overall mental availability during work hours remains constant when the commute is taken out of their role. Additional increases of availability that have been reported include a reduction in sick leave, less time-off requests for home deliveries or repairs and a faster response to off-hour emails which allow all parties to maintain a higher level of work continuity.

3. Overhead Reductions:
   Organizations with successful telecommute programs which stagger their employee’s office time have found creative ways to reduce their overall work space requirements and furnishings which consequently also reduced their rent (lease), utility bills and other resource expenses by 30%. Organizations that have embraced a fully virtual model have actually eliminated all of these overhead expenses altogether. With today’s cloud-based technology, hosted services, residential high-speed Internet and VoIP phone systems, organizations can maintain the outward (client-facing) appearance of a traditional brick & mortar office presence without the expense of one.

4. Higher Retention:
   Most career-focused employees who are self-motivated, well organized and responsible prefer the “telecommute” experience. In many cases, prospective candidates for hire were willing to accept a lower wage for the opportunity to work from home. This is one of the most sought after benefits for today’s working professionals. Positions that allow for full-time work from home status also make it easier to retain valuable employees that may otherwise be forced to resign due to a personal need for relocation. This is also a great benefit for attracting people with disabilities and for helping provide work to struggling communities “virtually” anywhere in the country.

5. Project Continuity:
   Telecommuting also serves as a valuable mechanism for minimizing external impacts on projects. Workers are less likely to take sick leave or endanger the health of their coworkers which negatively impacts deadlines & deliverables. Other obstacles such as extremely inclement weather, traffic delays, or school work days (for parents of young children) do not affect the overall continuity of individual contributions which allow projects to maintain course.

Telecommuting is becoming more popular each year as organizations begin realizing the many financial and HR related benefits. Companies that may not have the capability to implement a successful telecommute program or those who would rather save even more money by avoiding payroll & benefits liabilities can outsource their administrative & customer care responsibilities (positions) to a firm like Exec-u-sist.

Don’t just provide information, provide specific answers to your visitor’s questions

Is your website working for you? We’re not just talking about the design, how much traffic your generating or even your Search Engine ranking. Quite simply put, if you aren’t available to answer questions about your products and services immediately, you are missing the opportunity to convert visitors to paying clients.

Today it’s become easier than ever to research products or services online, pull up countless reviews or testimonials and learn just about everything needed to make a buying decision within minutes. With Exec-u-chat on your website, we can proactively engage your visitors to answer questions and give them the initial customer service that first impressions require to earn the sale.

Train your team lead to answer pre-sales, post-sales & support questions. If the inquiries become too in depth for web chat, we can call the visitor based on the information they provide, to further engage their curiosity. All chat transcripts can be sent to you via email and we can send an SMS message to your cell phone if a hot lead requires your attention.

Live Web Chat Improves The Consumer’s Experience

Give your visitors an interactive opportunity to build a relationship with your company

One of the most important questions today’s consumer wants answered is ”what will my experience be like if I give this company my business?”. Genuine, Customer Care is a commodity many companies have sacrificed to save the bottom line, however we believe Customer Care is crucial for growth. Exec-u-chat provides more than an interactive Live Web Chat button on your website and Live Web Chat agents who copy & paste information from a script. We want to partner with your business, learn everything you would teach an in-house sales or customer service professional and then engage your website visitors as if we were a member or division of your company.

We can gather key information before and during the conversation that will help your sales team follow-up. The first thing your visitors will notice is that they are chatting with a true American. We will interject personality into the web chat conversation and engage your visitors as if they were colleagues. Web chat visitors want to have a conversation with knowledgeable sales professionals not be given scripted text that may only generally answer their concerns.

While many web chat conversations are quick and to the point, many more are providing that invaluable 1st impression. They are a test to see if your company cares more about process and protocol than about the individual needs of its consumers. Millions of companies around the world use live web chat to gain sales intelligence while providing a free service to the end-user. This service could be the very beginning of an enduring and loyal relationship.

Live Web Chat Costs Less Than 1 Lost Sale Per Month

Is the true measure of a lost sale worth more than a few dollars?

The success of a website is measured by traffic and conversion. Traffic analytics provide information about how many unique visitors have landed on your website. Conversion is the metrics behind the amount of visitors that actually became customers. How many unique visitors are you losing to competitors because the information they wanted wasn’t readily available? How much did that lost sale cost in terms of new revenue, possible repeat business and referrals?

Live Web Chat isn’t expensive but not having it can be costly. If you consider that about 1 in 10 visitors will use Live Web Chat to get the answers to their questions and about 15%-20% of Live Web Chat users will convert to clients and it only costs about $2 per chat… what are you waiting for? Once you’ve invested in Search Engine Optimization to get traffic to your page, let us get them to the table. We’re not just offering the software or the button to click, we’re also providing 100% US Based pre-sales professionals who will be trained by you to gather information, build the relationship and begin converting the prospect to a hot lead that you can convert. Contact Us today to get started.

Have you ever wanted or needed a virtual assistant but either they were too expensive, too unreliable or too difficult to manage? Most people think of CraigsList or other community boards when they are searching for temporary or virtual help but inevitably, that eats up more time they don’t have while their “to do” list keeps growing. Well, we’ve got good news. Exec-u-sist provides a fully managed solution that ensures your work is completed on time, on budget and on point.

Our team of experienced Administrative Assistants all use Microsoft Office 365 ™ to perform just about any task including documentation, spreadsheets, presentations, email management, invoicing etc… They consider themselves to be Ninja Google Stalkers when it comes to any type of Internet research and they can even manage your social media postings, perform client follow-ups or just about any customized administrative tasks you would expect an in-house office assistant to perform.

What sets us apart from a typical virtual Administrative Assistant is that we provide you with a team of administrators who are managed by a team lead. Your Administrative team’s lead is your primary point of contact and is the person you will build a relationship with. You can call in from the road, send a quick email or even Skype with your team lead whenever you need to. They are also responsible for quality control & assurance.

We also don’t bog you down with process and protocol. Many other firms that provide similar services require you to log your requests and manage your tasks from a client portal. We have found this to be very impersonal and not as easy for clients to request help on the fly which is important for business owners, sales professionals and executives on the go. We want to make it easy for you to get the help you need and we want to learn your expectations so we have an opportunity to exceed them.

Today, with major advancements in technology, high speed Internet in just about every home, and a staggering US unemployment rate, companies can actually reduce costs and increase revenue simply by hiring US-Based, Managed Virtual Service firms.

Virtual, in today’s vernacular, is synonymous with telecommuting. These same companies who outsource their customer care to traditional, facilities-based, brick & mortar call centers are also allowing a majority of their “in-house” staff to work from home full-time or in regular frequency. Managed Virtual Services allows a company to outsource their same needs to a well-managed, well connected, process driven team of professionals that work from home full time. Because these outsourced firms don’t have to pay facilities & utilities expenses and because resource overhead is minimal, the overall cost of doing business is significantly lower. Now factor in the flexibility of being able to hire professionals from “virtually” anywhere in the country and you can pretty much control labor costs as well. The end result; US-Based talent at offshore prices.

Save our country, Improve your bottom line; Hire American. www.execusist.com